NEW SCRUTINY FOR BOEING DEAL

28 Oct 2003

For months, watchdog groups like the Project on Government Oversight have been howling about the Air Force's deal with Boeing to lease 100 tankers -- even though the lease would cost $5.6 billion more than buying the planes outright.Now, the national press' major players are starting to catch up. Today, New York Times columnist David Brooks called the deal "the Encyclopaedia Britannica of shady. It's as if somebody spent years trying to gather every single sleazy aspect of modern Washington and cram it all into one legislative effort."Yesterday, the Washington Post examined on its front-page the sordid machinations surrounding the Boeing contract in excruciating detail. And the paper profiles the "Dragon Lady" who helped ram the deal through.